Church in New Hampshire at center of 1997 rape case

CONCORD, N.H. - Tina Anderson was a scared 15-year-old when she was summoned by church leaders to stand before her congregation and apologize for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

Just minutes earlier in that evening service in 1997, a longtime church member admitted publicly that he had been unfaithful to his wife.

Now, 13 years later, Ernie Willis is charged with raping Anderson, and police are investigating what church leaders knew about the assault and whether they shipped Anderson out of state to keep the matter quiet.

When the pastor heard Anderson's allegations, he told her that if she had "lived in the Old Testament," she would have been stoned to death for not reporting the attack sooner, she said.

"He also said I had allowed myself to be put in a compromising situation," Anderson said. The pastor decided she needed to be "church-disciplined."

"I was completely humiliated," she said. "I hoped it was a nightmare I'd wake up from, and it wouldn't be true anymore."

The Associated Press does not generally identify victims of sexual assault, but Anderson asked that her name be made public. Several witnesses to the church service recounted details to the AP.

Willis, 51, of Guilford, N.H., will be arraigned June 16 on sexual assault charges. He was released on a $100,000 personal-recognizance bond after his arrest last week. A message left on a cellphone linked to him was not returned. A woman who answered the phone at a number listed to him said he no longer lived there. Court documents do not list an attorney.

Concord police also are weighing whether to bring obstruction-of-justice charges against anyone who may have concealed the girl's location during the initial investigation, which authorities say they were forced to shelve when there was no victim to testify.

After all these years, Anderson decided to come forward after she was contacted by a police detective in February.

She told police she started baby-sitting for Ernie and Tammie Willis' children when she was 14. When she was 15, Willis volunteered to teach her to drive after her mother refused to do so.

During one of those driving sessions, she says, Willis pulled her into the back seat in a parking lot and assaulted her. The second attack occurred weeks later, when she said Willis came to her house, pushed her onto a couch and raped her again.

Anderson said months later she realized she was pregnant, and her mother took her to the pastor at Trinity Baptist Church for counseling.

This week, Pastor Chuck Phelps said he reported the accusation to police and child welfare authorities within a day of his conversation with Anderson and her mother. He would not discuss the discipline session or his role in moving her to Colorado to live with a family of another independent fundamentalist Baptist congregation.

Police refused to release any reports, citing the ongoing investigation.

The current pastor of Trinity Baptist, Brian Fuller, e-mailed congregation members Monday saying that Phelps reported the alleged crime to police Oct. 8, 1997. Fuller said it was not until three weeks later that the girl, "by parental consent and pastoral counsel," moved to Colorado.

Matt Barnhart said leaders' control drove him away from the church.

Barnhart said he and his family had been members of Trinity Baptist for just six months when he witnessed Willis and Anderson's church discipline session. "We left because of Tina. It nagged me for years. They blamed her. They shipped her off."

While in Colorado, Anderson said, she was home-schooled, had no contact with students her own age and was told by her pastors not to discuss what happened to her in New Hampshire.

She placed her daughter, born in March 1998, up for adoption at Phelps' urging, with a family he had chosen.

Anderson, now 28, was educated at a Baptist college and offered a job as a music teacher at International Baptist College in Chandler. She was married, the mother of three other children, when a phone call out of the blue in early February filled her with dread. It was from Concord Detective Chris DeAngelis, saying he learned of her case through a Facebook page titled "Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Cult Survivors."

"I was kind of in shock, but I just answered his questions," Anderson said.

Crystal Evans, a longtime friend and former classmate of Anderson's at Trinity Baptist, had joined the Facebook exchange and provided police with information about Anderson.

Anderson said she wants the pastors held accountable for concealing her whereabouts and fostering an environment in which no one could question the church's authority.